The Burnt Orange Heresy

On a fairly wet and windy night, we got along to the Windsor Twin Cinema in Nedlands for a preview screening of The Burnt Orange Heresy. Big thanks to the Luna Palace Cinemas once more. This is an Italian/English co-production, directed by Giuseppi Capotondi and adapted by Scott B. Smith from the Charles Willeford novel. I'll admit to not knowing any of these geezers but Capotondi has directed a few episodes of Suburra (TV) and Willeford wrote the book that the under-rated Miami Blues was based on. So a reasonably eclectic bunch of folk were involved in this, and we haven't even looked at the cast yet.

The story starts with art historian/critic, James Figueras giving a too-clever-by-half presentation to a group of tourists in Milan. Here he meets Berenice Hollis, a mysterious woman who just wandered in 'for the free potato chips'. Claes Bang and Elizabeth Debicki play the two leads, and the film, fairly briskly, gets them into bed and then on to Lake Como. Debicki really shows some acting chops, even though some of the dialogue is a bit ripe - there's a lot of 'oooh maybe I'm telling the truth, maybe I'm not' stuff going on, and it's pretty mug-handed in its foreshadowing. The themes of truth (in art and life) and freedom of choice are developed better as the film progresses, due in part to the introduction of Messrs Jagger and Sutherland. Mick plays art dealer/collector, Joseph Cassidy and it's fun to see him on screen. Donald plays reclusive, much sought after, legendary painter, Jerome Debney, who lives and paints on Cassidy's estate (the picturesque Villa Pizzo).

The film picks up the pace from here, with Cassidy asking/threatening Figueras to 'procure' him a Debney, as the famous artist has agreed to an interview with him, but is extremely reluctant to show his work, let alone sell a piece. Debney, meanwhile, takes a shine to Hollis and a sweetly paternal relationship builds. There are a few nice touches in the writing. The orange of the title sides with one half of the moral divide, the blue that Debney is fruitlessly searching for, the other. Incidentally, these colours often appear on film posters, as they juxtapose two of the opposing points of a colour wheel (see TV Tropes and The Wrap for more detail). Flies take a more prominent position than you'd ever likely see outside an Aussie outback drama. And critics take a mauling here - Debney enjoys messing with them by offering obscure titles to his work and letting "the critics, those ravenous dogs, wear themselves out chewing on it, searching for meaning where there is none."

Some of the characters' choices come across as a bit illogical and there is one pretty rank scene involving a tone deaf apology. Aside from these issues, The Burnt Orange Heresy is a pretty diverting film with a Coenesque ending that leaves the viewer pondering potential outcomes. It did for me, at least.

The Burnt Orange Heresy opens at the Luna, the Windsor and the Luna on SX on July 23rd.

See also:

On the art theme, Mike Leigh's Mr. Turner (2014) is great, and I usually don't recommend TV but Debicki shines in David Farr and Susanne Bier's The Night Manager (2016).

Wake in Fright

For the eighth streaming choice, this time as part of the Australian Movies collection on ABC iView (in Australia only), we watched Wake in Fright, a recently re-discovered and digitally restored version of the 1971 outback drama. It's directed by Canadian Ted Kotcheff and adapted from the Kenneth Cook novel by Jamaican-born Evan Jones. While Cook was Australian, the 'outsider eye' of the screenwriter and director lend the film a curiosity value of a foreigner's peek into the culture of Australia at the time. The fact that the film was not well-liked on initial release shouldn't surprise so much.

Wake in Fright follows a young English teacher, played by Gary Bond, and his attempts to get to Sydney for his summer holiday. Told like this, it sounds like a jovial romp, possibly a Carry On style film. But this is about as far as you get from a romp. The teacher, John Grant, is a stroppy, superior bell-end and the people he meets are, for the most part, yobbish alcoholics, all very suspicious, even hostile, if people don't share a drink with them. Welcome to the Aussie bush.

The fictional towns of Tiboonda and Bundanyabba are desolate and dusty and very hard for Grant to escape from. He's waylaid first by the 'Yabba town cop, played, with sinister comradeship, by Chips Rafferty in his last film appearance, then by an 'illegal' two-up game in the back of a local pub, where he meets Doc Tydon, played by Donald Pleasance. Other people cross his path, including a young Jack Thompson, in his first feature film, and a bored local's daughter, played by Sylvia Kay.

The film's centre-piece is an infamous kangaroo cull, where Grant reaches his peak/zenith, that tips him into a new kind of person, at least for the time being. This 'hunt' is brutally unsettling and reminds us that we're watching a film from a bygone era. Apparently, the slaughter was accepted in the original cut as it wasn't shot for the film, but as a document of an actual hunt, where the animals were to be killed regardless.

Ultimately, Wake in Fright is an important, intriguing film in Australia's history, well-paced and performed, yet still slightly awkward to watch. The story of the film's travails since release is an interesting side note, well explained by the director here. And here's a great Guardian article about the film.

See also:

For a similar look at the Aussie outback, why not The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), directed by Stephan Elliot, and Grant's character arc is quite similar to Bill Murray's in Groundhog Day (1993), directed by Harold Ramis.

SPOILERS IN PODCAST!

Listen to "Wake in Fright" on Spreaker.

The Goldfinch

After a short hiatus, here's the 7th film in the lockdown streaming series. The Goldfinch is showing on Netflix and Amazon Prime in Australia. It's a somewhat laboured adaptation of the Pulitzer prize winning novel by Donna Tarrt and it's directed by John Crowley.

The story follows Theo Decker, played young by Oakes Fegley and slightly older by Ansel Elgort (and yep, these are some wired names but have a crack at Wolfhard and Kleintank!). A rando-bomb explodes in a museum, killing his mum and so he half-inches a famous painting, the titular Goldfinch, painted by Carel Fabritius, who also died in an explosion (which the painting may also have been in). The coincidences don't stop there but I'll leave you to them. This is all about grief and blame and possibly the role of facsimiles or substitutes in life and art. Theo eventually becomes an antique dealer under the mentor-ship of Jeffrey Wright's Hobie, whom he met after another brush with fate.

I found the performances pretty insipid, specifically Elgort in the lead, but Nicole Kidman and Wright can do better. Maybe it was required of them but it didn't quite roll for me. Technically, it has a few aces up its sleeve - Roger Deakins is DOP and he can make dirt look beautiful, Peter Straughan (of Tinker Tailor and Frank fame) adapted the book, and the soundtrack is especially solid, with songs from Radiohead, Them and New Order.

Ultimately though, I couldn't really go with it. It's uneven, though some of the sequences are well-paced, it overstays its welcome, and the last half hour or so seems to breach into another genre. Well-meaning but not quite up to snuff.

See also:

Crowley's first feature, Intermission (2003), a multi-character comedy/drama set in Dublin and the underrated, Frank (2014), directed by Lenny Abrahamson and penned by Straughan and Jon Ronson.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS IN POD....

Listen to "The Goldfinch" on Spreaker.

A White, White Day

My second return to the cinema was to see A White, White Day, a blackly comic Icelandic drama directed by Hlynur Palmason. Once more, big thanks to the Luna in Leederville for the screening. Incidentally, I only recently found out that the old Cinema Paradiso in Northbridge (run by the Palace Cinema group) has closed for good. Sad news. I'm pretty sure Emmanuelle Beart doesn't remember locking eyes with me there as I struggled to wipe choc bomb remnants off my face, but I do. To be fair to her, she just about managed to hide her disgust with a polite smile. Anyway, it was a fine cinema and its loss just makes the Luna that much more essential.

Accursed ramblings! Onto the film. This is the second feature from Palmason and he appears to be at the forefront, along with Benedikt Erlingsson, of a mini-wave of Icelandic films*. (*This could be complete bollocks - I admit to a paucity of knowledge of Icelandic films). The film's name is explained in an opening title:

"When everything is white and you can no longer see the difference between the earth and the sky, the dead can talk to us who are still living."

This is followed by a car driving on a foggy mountain road, only to crash over the edge. Next comes some time lapse shots of a cruddy little house surrounded by small horses. So far, so odd, yet strangely compelling. Eventually, the film sets out its stall as a story about a grandfather, ex-cop Ingimundur, and his granddaughter, Salka. And his grief. You see, as we winkle out later, his wife was in the car at the start of the film and Ingimundur is having some trouble dealing with this loss. Palmason, who also wrote the film, must be given plaudits for not over-explaining things, allowing the audience to make assumptions, right or wrong. In fact, aside from a couple of uncomfortable appointments with a psychiatrist, there's precious little exposition in the whole film.

The relationship between Ingimundur and Salka is the focal point of the film and it's quite a touching one, due in no small part to the debut performance of Ida Mekkin Hlynsdottir. She's fantastic in this pivotal role. She's also the director's daughter (see the patronymic of Hlyn's dottir). The entire cast are fine, especially the comical turns by the town's police officers, but the weight of the film is carried expertly by Ingvar Sigurdsson. He's been around the block, both in this film and in his career, and it shows in his exasperated, barely-in-control performance. There's one scene where the phone is ringing, the dog is barking, Salka is watching some loud, bonkers shite kids' show on TV and Ingimundur quietly shuts himself outside. But the lack of histrionics is paid off later in the film.

As I was watching the plot unfold, I was reminded of the underrated Alexander Payne film, The Descendants, which shares some DNA with A White, White Day. I'll say no more on that. The style also reminded me of Michael Haneke's films. Lots of locked off shots, unconventional angles and scenes that linger but have every chance of being explosively interrupted. There's not a blue sky to be seen and Ingimundur's arc in the film could be viewed as akin to the rock he rolls down a hill, which ends up in the sea, sunk but at least resting.



Advance screenings of A White, White Day start at the Luna from July 2nd and it opens fully on July 9th.

See also:

The aforementioned The Descendants (2011) and, in memory of the great Ian Holm, The Sweet Hereafter (1997), directed by Atom Egoyan.